In this excerpt from “The Shortest History of AI,” Toby Walsh explores the history of the Logic Theorist, the first AI to prove mathematical theorems.

“The universe clicks along in perfect accord with the laws of physics forever.”

Why some of philosophy’s strangest scenarios are more than mental games.

The more you know, the better you can act.

Participants’ brains revealed they were doing a kind of “neural replay” of the game they had been manipulated to win.